20070731

In "Tracking coverage of Jews, U.S. in German Press," (Cleveland Jewish News) a journalist living in Berlin explains how the German and Austrian media's depiction of immoral Jewish influence (vis a vis Israel/Palestine) further tainting an already immoral America (vis a vis Iraq, global Jihad) has turned popular European sentiment against them both.

... Today the Bush Administration is behaving counterintuitively. It pursues its alliance with Saudi Arabia with vigor while eschewing and downgrading its alliance with Israel.

The administration's hostility toward Israel is not limited to its intention to arm the Saudis with weapons capable of destroying Israel's strategic assets in the Negev. It is also actively pressuring Israel not to defend itself against Iran and its proxies.

By pressuring Israel to enact a policy of capitulation toward the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, similar to its capitulation to the Palestinians two years ago in Gaza, the Bush administration is advancing a policy that if implemented all but ensures Iranian control over the outskirts of Jerusalem and Amman.

THERE ARE two principal causes of the US's coolness toward Israel and warm embrace of the Saudis. First, the administration's failure to achieve its goals in Iraq strengthened the influence of the Saudi's Cold War proponents. These proponents, led by former secretary of state James Baker's disciples Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, advance their Saudi-centric agenda while paving the way for a US withdrawal from Iraq without victory. In the Baker camp's view, the best way to facilitate a pullout is by strengthening the Saudis so that they can perhaps prevent a post-US withdrawal Iraq from devolving into an Iranian colony.

Yet the lessons of the Cold War, and those of the past 15 years remain clear. The Saudis remain at best fair-weather friends to the US, while Israel's strength or weakness directly impacts US national security and geopolitical interests. As was the case during the Cold War, so too today, the US's best option for checking Russian and Iranian expansionism and neutralizing Sunni jihadists is to back Israel.

If the US were willing to understand the clear lessons from its Cold War experience in the Middle East, it would not be pushing Israel to weaken itself still further through land giveaways to Iran's Palestinian proxies. It would not be actively undercutting Israel's national security by supplying sophisticated weapons to the Saudis. It would be admonishing the Olmert government for its irresponsible behavior and exhorting Israel not to go wobbly because it is needed for the larger fight.

20070730

Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.

... How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

20070727

The author of "Enlightened Islam" (di Renzo Editore), Mr. Sadik Al-Azm, says that Islam can be made compatible with democracy if it "jettisons certain laws" -- particularly the dhimmi laws, which institutionalize discrimination against non-Muslims, and which most Western Muslims deny even exist.

Syrian philosopher Sadik Al-Azm believes that while "there exists a conflict between Islam, in its original form, and democracy, this problem can be solved easily".

"To do this Islam needs to jettison certain laws, first and foremost the concept of 'ahl al-dhimma'" the so-called 'protected' status granted to followers of the only two other religions recognised by Muslims - Judaism and Christianity, "Al-Azm said in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).

In practice, ahl al-dhimma, which is gaining popularity in an increasingly Islamised Iraq, allows non-Muslims, and only Christians and Jews at that, to follow their religion, while effectively stripping them of their political rights and privileges.

Abolishing ahl al-dhimma "paves the way for the concepts of citizenship and equality of all people before the law" Al-Azm , who lectures at universities in Lebanon, Syria and Germany, told AKI.

Similarly, the Syrian philosopher argues that Islam must reappraise its stance on slavery, which he says is at best ambiguous.

"Political Islam needs to reassure other parts of society that democracy means the majority governing while respecting the rights of the majority", Al-Azm said. (Source DhimmiWatch)

20070723

The camp, home to 40,000 refugees before the hostilities, has been completely destroyed and its rebuilding is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Its residents have sought shelter in other Palestinian refugee camps.

Gil Ronen observes in Israel National News:Nahr el-Bared, which had 40,000 residents ten weeks ago, now has less than 1,000, possibly less than 100. The rest have either fled or died. The total number of civilians killed is not known, but the reports that have come from Nahr el-Bared over the past few weeks do not bode well. "The total death toll from the battle that has been raging since May 20 has exceeded 200," says one report, and explains that it is quoting "estimates not taking into account. "The army is not letting anyone in here so no one can see the massacres they have committed"he bodies of Islamists remaining inside Nahr al-Bared camp."

"The army is not letting anyone in here," said an Arab from inside Nahr el-Bared who was quoted in an earlier report by IRIN News, a UN-sponsored news agency, "so no one can see the massacres they have committed."

Despite all this, the international community and world media appear relatively unconcerned by what may well turn out to be a massacre of civilians at Nahr el-Bared, and by the "ethnic cleansing" which has turned it into a ghost town. Video aired on Al Jazeera TV, however, shows scenes that would have elicited great furor, had they occured in a town that was under Israeli attack.

20070720

Prof. Andrei Markovitz of Univ of Michigan, author of "Uncouth Nation- Why Europe Dislikes America" in TV interview with CBN News' Dale Hurd:'It's not an issue of an American policy ..., but that objectionable policy (e.g., the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal) is linked to a characterological trait - that it is inherent, the essence of Americans - then that to me is anti-Americanism.'

CNAM Productions has produced (for Corp for Public Bcasting and SBS-TV Australia, via ChrisACD on YouTube) this documentary exploring current European Anti-Americanism (in 5 of 6 parts):

20070719

MEMRI is taking upon itself a public service - offering ISPs that want to know about the content of the Arabic and Farsi (Iranian) language sites they are hosting - information regarding those sites within 7-10 days, so they can make an informed decision on whether they want to continue hosting these sites.

ISPs can now access the MEMRI Public Service Guide (MEMRI PSG) through a dedicated webpage, www.MEMRIPSG.org and submit their questions.

Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor called for international action to preclude Iran from nuclear armaments. He said, "We must end this nightmare. We must end the madness. We must make it clear to the Iranians that all options are on the table and that there is no way they will be allowed to hold nuclear weapons."

Former Prime Minister Netanyahu called for the world to unite against the Islamist disease plaguing the world.

CUFI Exec Director, David Brog, spoke about the purpose of American power, and America's historical recognition of the Jewish nation 11-minutes after it declared statehood. He referred to Pastor John Hagee as a political, as well as spiritual leader in America.

Pastor Hagee cited significant reasons we stand with Israel. He called for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem promptly. He also called for the political and spiritual significance of keeping Jerusalem united under Israeli sovereignty, on its 40-year anniversary of reunification.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gave the most compelling political presentation of the evening. Gingrich pointed out the United States and western civilization are in a global conflict with radical Islam, and must choose between victory and surrender.

Gingrich charged that instead of fighting to win, President Bush is now only pursuing appeasement through a Mideast peace conference.

Comparing that to the attempted appeasement of Nazi Germany at Munich before World War II, Gingrich said, "We don't have a peace process. We have a surrender process."

Pastor John McTernan argues for Christian support for Israel with a protester.

Advocate and author of "Myths and Facts about Palestine," Mr. Eli Hertz, has addressed an history lesson to Pres. Bush and Secy of State Rice in response to their announced strategy to create a Palestinian state.To President Bush

I read with interest your remarks on the Middle East given on July 16, 2007 at the White House. I appreciate your sincere commitment and devotion in promoting and advancing the creation of functional democracies and peace around the world - particularly your effort in the Middle East.

As one who devotes his time studying the Arab-Israeli conflict, and as a person of the Jewish race and religion, it became incumbent upon me to direct your attention to statements you made of which I found offending. Statements perceived as fact, but in reality are, in my humble opinion, misguided. I would start with the notion that your administration will not 'do business' with terror organizations and those who call for the destruction of Israel, or at best, suggest to toss the "Jews to the sea."

This brings me to Fateh, the main faction of the PLO for whom Mahmoud Abbas is the driving force and was one of its founding members. This is the organization and leadership that the administration relies upon to bring functional democracy, freedom and peace to the region.

Mr. President, it takes little effort to learn what Fateh is all about. Its constitution calls under Article 12 for the "Complete liberation of Palestine, and obliteration of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence."As for how it will achieve its goal to wipe Israel off the map, Fateh's constitution, Article 19, minces no words:"Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated" [italic by author]

If this does not suffice, please review Abbas' words in a recent rally on January 11, 2007, to a crowd estimated at nearly 250,000 supporters. Abbas calls on Palestinians to refrain from internal fighting and to direct their guns only against Israeli "occupation."

He promises to "not give up one inch of land in Jerusalem" and he "considers the settlements illegal."In his book, "the issue of the refugees is non-negotiable" So as much for the partner.

And now to the "Occupation"I notice with relief that you did not spell out who is the occupier and who is the occupant - just to make sure I will discuss the legal occupation under international law of Jewish settlers in the area known forever as Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

In 1897 it was Benjamin Herzl, founder of modern Zionism who said: "Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency."In 1917 it was Arthur James Balfour of Great Britain who declared:

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object ..."

In 1922 it was Winston Churchill (your hero), British Secretary of State for the Colonies that declared:Jews are in Palestine "as of right and not on sufferance ... When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride."

On July 24, 1922 it was fifty-one member countries - the entire League of Nations - that published the legally binding document "Mandate for Palestine" and unanimously declared:

"Recognition Has Been Given to the Historical Connection of the Jewish People with Palestine and to the Grounds for Reconstituting their National Home in that Country."

The "Mandate for Palestine," a historical League of Nations document laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, a 10,000-square-mile area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law and valid to this day.

On June 30, 1922 it was the joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States that unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine - anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

"Favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United State of America in Congress assembled, That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected." [The resolution was incorporated in the 1937 Palestine Royal commission Report, Chapter II, page 31]

On September 21, 1922 it was Warren G. Harding, President of the United Sates of America who signed the joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Mr. President, Palestine is a geographical area, not a nationality!

As a matter of fact there has never been a sovereign Arab state in Palestine. The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arab nations who never established a Palestinian state themselves. Nor did the Arabs recognize or establish a Palestinian state during the two decades prior to the Six-Day War when the West Bank was under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control; nor did the Palestinian Arabs clamor for autonomy or independence during those years under Jordanian and Egyptian rule.

Mr. President - Jewish "continuing occupation" that you speak about, is legal and endorsed by international law.The "Mandate for Palestine" document defined where Jews are and are not permitted to settle. Article 6 of the Mandate clearly states:"The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."

The "Mandate for Palestine" document is the last legally binding document regarding the status of what is commonly called "the West Bank and Gaza." The September 16, 1922 memorandum (of the Mandate) is also the last modification of the official terms of the "Mandate" on record by the League of Nations or by its legal successor - the United Nations - in accordance with Article 27 of the "Mandate" that states unequivocally: "The consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for any modification of the terms of this mandate."

Mr. President, political rights to self-determination as a polity for Arabs were guaranteed in three other mandates - in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. A forth Arab state east of the Jordan River - Trance-Jordan, came to fruition via the "Mandate for Palestine."

Mr. President:300,000,000 Arabs in 21 'exclusive' Arab countries now occupy an area of 5,207,000 Square Miles, including all the principal Arab and Moslem centers.6,000,000 Jews in 1 country now occupy an area of nearly 10,000 square miles [will fit into Lake Michigan with plenty of room left] in Palestine, and you Mr. President propose to reduce it even further.

20070716

(IsraelNN.com) The IDF Deputy Commander of the Northern Command during the Second Lebanon War says Israel is learning from last summer and preparing for war. Speaking at a Monday conference at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Gen. (res.) Eyal Ben-Reuven said the IDF is learning the mistakes of last summer's war and is preparing for a comprehensive war. Ben-Reuven said the war in Lebanon was justified, but turned out "bad" for Israel both militarily and politically. "It is not good that we failed," he said. Ben-Reuven feels that Syria will expect to suffer losses in a coming conflict with Israel, "but will try to hit Israel's homefront in order to win diplomatic gains in peace talks that will follow, and also cause another split in Israeli society. The IDF will need a fast and strong ground forces operation to knock out the areas from where rockets are launched against Israel as quickly as possible - and the army is training for this."Other speakers at the conference included former Police Commissioner Rafi Peled and former IDF Intelligence Chief Gen. (res.) Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash. Ze'evi-Farkash said that both Iran and Hizbullah simply need time to improve their military capacities against Israel.

"Some claim that while the June 1967 war was a military loss, the spirit of armed resistance endured. They believe that resistance is still the strategic choice of Arabs. We have seen the results of the strategic choice of violent resistance by Hamas: an ugly Israeli barrier depriving Palestinians of ever more land that has made their lives even grimmer. The slogans of resistance may incite support, but the consequences of these very slogans cannot be accepted by the Arab public. No one in the Arab world today would accept that Hamas' actions were a large part responsible for the Israeli barrier. There has not been and nor will there be independent assessment of Hamas' strategy. Slogans continue to trump the actual results of actions. "The same strategic manipulation of public opinion can be seen in Hizbullah's 'victory' against Israel in summer 2006. But what was this victory? A victory that left around 1,200 Lebanese dead, led to billions of dollars in damages and losses in tourism income, and the entry of United Nations troops in Southern Lebanon? With such a balance sheet, how could Hizbullah and its Arab supporters mislead the Arab public and claim victory? Was any inquiry made? Where is the independent commission that studied Hizbullah's actions? Yes, the party's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, was left standing, just as Abdel-Nasser was. But is that enough when their nations and people were left battered?

"On the military level, our enemies have been able to create a situation in which Israel hesitates to use its superior military force and expertise in its own defense. This was also a major strategic accomplishment.

Israel's leaders must find suitable responses to the enemies' tactics of media warfare. They must find a way to neutralize the influence of figures such as the producer-director of the scene at Kfar Kana, who wore a green helmet, and his evil collaborators in the Western media. If they don't, then Israel will suffer more miserable defeats in the media battle. Such failures in the war for public opinion carry a high military and political price. "Dr. Joel Fishman is a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

20070712

Shattering the Palestinian Authority's accusation toward Israel as having poisoned Arafat's food, a Fatah member has confessed the French hospital findings (which Arafat's 'merry-widow' Suha blackmailed the P.A. millions of international humanitarian donations to withhold) - that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat died from contracting AIDS.

Ahmad Jibril, Secretary-General of the PFLP General Command, which aired on Al-Manar TV on July 5, 2007:Mr. Ion Pacepa was the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. He is author of "Red Horizons" (1987), a memoir. "Arafat has made a political career by pretending that he has not been involved in his own terrorist acts. But evidence against him grows by the day. James Welsh, a former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency, has told U.S. journalists that the NSA had secretly intercepted the radio communications between Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad during the PLO operation against the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, including Arafat's order to kill Ambassador Noel. The conversation was allegedly recorded by Mike Hargreaves, an NSA officer stationed in Cyprus, and the transcripts were kept in a file code-named "Fedayeen."For more than 30 years the U.S. government has considered Arafat a key to achieving peace in the Middle East. But for more than 20 years, Washington also believed that Ceausescu was the only communist ruler who could open a breech in the Iron Curtain. During the Cold War era, two American presidents went to Bucharest to pay him tribute. In November 1989, when the Romanian Communist Party re-elected Ceausescu, he was congratulated by the United States. Three weeks later, he was accused of genocide and executed, dying as a symbol of communist tyranny."

20070710

Britain's mainstream media has created a popular anti-Israel/antisemitic racism, while rationalizing jihad within Britain's homeland and around the globe.

In this TV documentary, journalist Richard Littlejohn exposes the antisemitic racism (antithetical to a liberal society) which mainstream British society has fomented and British Jewry has allowed to fester.

"When some people heard I was making the programme, their first reaction was: 'I didn't know you were Jewish.' I'm not, but what's that got to do with the price of gefilte fish? They simply couldn't comprehend why a non-Jew would be in the slightest bit interested in investigating anti-Semitism. If I had been making a film about Islamophobia, no one would have asked me if I was Muslim. The Labour MP John Mann told me that he experienced exactly the same reaction when he instigated a parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism. 'As soon as I set it up, the first MP who commented to me said: "Oh, I didn't know you were Jewish, John."' He isn't, either. But the implication was plainly that the very idea of anti-Semitism is the invention of some vast Jewish conspiracy. (Labour MP John) Mann's inquiry reported: 'It is clear that violence, desecration and intimidation directed towards Jews is on the rise. Jews have become more anxious and more vulnerable to attack than at any time for a generation or longer.' That certainly bears out my own findings. After three months filming across Britain, I reached the conclusion: It's open season on the Jews."

She is the lone fighter of Israel-history re-writing among the insidious British media. This one woman tries to set-right the mis-truths that Israel's own Communications Department has allowed to fester to become common-knowledge.

"Israel — plus parts of the land which lie beyond its borders — was the nation state of the Jews hundreds of years before the Arabs invaded it.

The Jews were, indeed, the only people for whom Israel was their nation state. The destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, marking the exile of the Jews from their own homeland, and the subsequent longing for the return of Jewish peoplehood in Israel are an intrinsic and unbroken part of Jewish religious thinking, prayer and ritual.

A Jewish presence was maintained continuously in pre-Israel Palestine from the time of the exile, with a Jewish majority in Jerusalem for decades before Israel was re-created in 1948. The historic claim of the Jews to their own historic national home was, indeed, fundamental to the Balfour Declaration which committed Britain to re-establishing that national home in Palestine. The British government’s 1922 White Paper on Palestine made the point that Jewish rights in Palestine were not a gift from anyone:

"[I]n order that [Palestine’s Jewish] community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance.

That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognised to rest upon ancient historic connection.’[Link: http://www.melaniephillips.com/]

20070707

(AP) Britain marked the second anniversary of the London suicide bombings Saturday, a grim reminder as the country confronted a new wave of terrorism, and an Iraqi doctor appeared in court on charges linked to the most recent foiled attacksBritish Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other government ministers left wreaths outside King's Cross rail and subway station in a somber remembrance of the bombings. "It's amazing that it was two years ago," said John Salding, 63, whose girlfriend was among the 52 people killed in the 2005 suicide bombings. "My memories are all so fresh." Beverli Rhodes, 46, was on one of the trains when a bomb exploded. She was thrown against a metal pole and suffered brain damage. She says she's still haunted by the bombings.

"I (still) won't go on the Underground," she said.

The four suicide bombers struck three underground trains and one double-decker bus in 2005 in an attack with a trail leading back to al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan. More than 700 people were injured in the rush-hour attacks.

Counterterrorism agents say they have foiled several attacks since then in Britain — a trans-Atlantic airliner plot last August in which a group planned to blow up as many as 10 airplanes and the most recent failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.

An FBI spokeswoman said Mohammed Asha and another suspect had contacted the Philadelphia-based Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates.

Asha, a Jordanian physician of Palestinian heritage, contacted the agency within the last year, but apparently did not take the test for foreign medical school graduates, said the spokeswoman, Nancy O'Dowd.

..."The transparency of the careful renaming should be obvious. It hasn't been, just as the nature of the war against Israel has also been obscured. In reality, it is a classic Jihad against an Infidel state. And in fact, it began even before that state was declared, and burst into open warfare at the time the state was declared. It continued as diplomatic and economic warfare, punctuated by as much terrorism as proved possible, between 1948 and 1967. During that period there was not a single Israeli soldier in Gaza or the "West Bank." Then it continued after the defeat of 1967, with the goals re-packaged as having something to do with the "nationalist aspirations" of the just-invented "Palestinian people."... Things need to be seen aright in Thailand and Pakistan, in India and Bangladesh, in Pakistan and Sudan and Nigeria (where the Biafra War was a war, by the Christians, of self-defense against the Jihad conducted against them by the Muslims of the north), in France and Great Britain and elsewhere in the Bilad al-kufr, where Jihad by all means, but chiefly by use of the Money Weapon, along with campaigns of Da'wa and demographic conquest, proceed.And also, and not least, things need to be seen aright in Israel. That remains true whether or not the benighted and not very impressive current leaders of Israel recognize that what they are fighting against and have always been fighting against is a Jihad, even when they had no idea that it was a Jihad.And it is directed at their state not because of its size -- that is irrelevant -- but because it is a Jewish, and thus an Infidel state, on land that belongs to Islam. And it does not matter that the land is a mere sliver, without any natural resources. Nor does it matter that Jews, like the Kurds and Berbers and Armenians and Assyrians and Copts, were also people of the vast area so misleadingly by some now called "the Arab world," or that they might "deserve" a defensible state of their own. The very idea of the Infidel nation-state is abhorrent to Muslims, though of course those who now live in those nation-states will, for now, largely shut up about that abhorrence.The question is: how deliberately, willfully ignorant will Infidels, and especially those Infidels whose duty it is to instruct and protect us, continue to remain?"

20070702

When revolutionary sedition hides under a religious ideology or ethnic minority, rooting-out the seditionisn't racism.

With educated, upscale physicians executing the Glasgow Airport bombing, the public's notions of poverty or marginalization as the motivations for terrorism have been dispelled.

In it's search for answers, the public now must reckon with what the ex-terrorists and ex-Muslims have been trying to get through their racism-phobia filter. A former British Jihadi radical has been revealing what drives terror against the West. Have the British Muslim Physician bombings finally convinced the public to accept the notion that it's imperialist theology, not resentment, inspiring these attacks? And that sedition ought not be permitted any refuge inside theology?

"I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist"by Hassan Butt in The Daily Mail

"When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.

And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.

And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice. But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is becausemost Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth - that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away." ...

Melanie Phillips expounded upon the unwillingness to acknowledge the imperialist ideology in al-Qaeda's Islamist crusade to conquer infideldom with Islam by violence and intimidation."People have persisted in believing that Islamic terrorism could be explained by poverty, deprivation, alienation and so forth, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Now they are horrified that doctors, whose calling is to save life, can be bent on mass murder. The capacity of the human mind to delude itself never ceases to amaze. "How can such educated individuals be killers?" people exclaim. Have such people really leaned nothing from history? Have they forgotten the Nazis, forgotten Dr Mengele, forgotten that the genocide of the Jews was carried out by people who delighted in Goethe and Mozart? Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden’s number two until he died, is a paediatrician. Not just a doctor, but a children’s doctor. Yet he is responsible for the deliberate mass murder of thousands of people.

On BBC Radio Four’s Today programme this morning (0755 approx), the reformed Islamist extremist Hassan Butt patiently spelled out to presenter Jim Naughtie that Islamist terrorists carry out their acts of mass murder as an expression of religious faith and fervour. They do it, he said, ‘for the pleasure of God’. Far from being acts of despair, these terrible atrocities are acts of religious exultation. If we don’t understand, even now, that what we are facing is a religious war, a jihad against the unbeliever and backsliding Muslims across the world we cannot possibly hope to defend ourselves against it."